preventive parenting

May affection be a simple enterprise for you. May you never know entanglements with men who disengage quickly while you thrash about like a swan in the rings of a six-pack. I wish you friendships with discreet women; relatives whose opinions of you are not forged by the opinions of others; gentlemen callers who do not condescend. I wish you emotional slip knots, the limber stealth of escape artists, the willingness to remain tethered at the right times.

(Indulge me; I am your mother. My wishes are potent.)

May your heart never become such that it is only contented by playing the Nightingale. Do not be too tender, neither too eager to heal. May you never learn to use your own ribs as splints; do not break any bit of yourself to reset the men who are broken. May you laugh at the idea of women like your mother, who seek only the feral and the numb, then romanticize bringing them home. Do not wait by the shore for anyone’s return but your own — better, may you never know this pining. May you never set yourself adrift to become more present for others. Know the sound of yourself, listen for the whisper of your God, hear the hiss behind the lips of the man who cannot love you.

If anyone is able to indict you, may it be for the bluntness of your honesty, not the dullness of your deprecation. May your chest never be a bat-filled belfry. Love is crazy-making; may its loss leave you mercifully sane.

And when you grow, child, when you grow: may you never apologize for it. When you feel yourself unfurling as a tree, may you never withhold your figs. No one is owed your origin story. Give it only to those whom you trust and only when there is something to be gained.

Do not long for those who’ve made themselves isles. There is water between you now, but someday the plates may shift. You must be able to breathe regardless; may you never deprive yourself air. Never dive into seas for those already wielding life preservers; when the time comes, they will not share. May you never believe yourself a rescuer where you are regarded as little more than a spectacle.

And when you go, child, when you go: carry all these many wishes with you. May they never feel as weighty as a burden. May they ever be airy as embers. May they aid you in bearing quite little resemblance to me.